Thread Tools

505 Games and Re-Logic are proud to be able to finally - and officially - confirm that Terraria will indeed be coming to the Nintendo Wii U and 3DS platforms! This represents a massive opportunity to bring Terraria to a whole new set of gamers whom may have never seen Terraria before - as well as a chance to explore what might be possible in the game with dual screen functionality. We hope you share in our excitement around the potential here!

Of course, we are well aware that there have been a number of rumors and leaked information around this from various sources - so, the way we figure it, we owe you a bit more to help make this announcement even more newsworthy! Also please note that any "release dates" given out were not official.

Let's start with some never before seen pictures of the packaging - and we will hope to bring you some screenshots that show off some of the new functionality in the weeks to come:

​

Also, please welcome @Deanzor, a 505 Games representative who will be working on Nintendo Terraria!

He's shared some information and answered some questions here in the thread, so be sure to check it out:

I'm working on Nintendo Terraria so wanted to answer a few of your questions. Forgive my barebones profile: I'm on holiday and struggling with a single bar of phone signal to get any messages out.

Anyway, enough of my problems!

Terraria 3DS is for New 3DS and the regular 3DS. There will be a few additional control options on New 3DS to take advantage of the extra buttons, but nothing that would prevent cross play between the consoles. We want everyone to be able to play!

Content-wise, we're seeing what we can shoehorn in. 3DS is less powerful than even a basic smartphone, and the lower screen resolution presents a challenge. Of course the two screens are also a massive opportunity, and one we will exploit to the full.

We've got everything up to 1.2 in so far, and we're still working. We won't get all the 1.3 content in for launch, we know that. But please look forward to further updates on how we're doing there.

A few people have mentioned 3D, but that's not currently a focus for us. The way 3DS works, it's a big overhead to render in 3D. It's more important that we get it working in 2D. Don't be fooled by the graphical style: the massive world of Terraria is a stiff challenge for 3DS.

I think you're going to enjoy touching to build and dig, but we don't make it compulsory. In fact, some of the controls stuff we've got working in 3DS works so nicely we are looking at rolling bits into the other console versions.

Wii U will take its cues from the existing console versions, but obviously takes full advantage of touch and the second screen.

Bear with me a moment while I re-read the thread to see if there's anything else I can share...0

Click to expand...

​

Question:
Do we get download play so we can do multiplayer with friends?
Will the Wii U version support Miiverse?
Will the Wii U version have voice chat?

Multiplayer: Wii U as per other versions. 1-8 player online versus friends, 1-4 splitsceen. One cool touch though is that you can split displays on Wii U, so 1P gets all of the Gamepad screen and 2P and above split the TV screen.

The dual-screen functionality will no doubt allow these versions to play much more like the PC version of the game than the current one for consoles. I'm looking forward to second-screen inventory and accessory management, housing management, map usage, and anything else the team can think of that would make use of it. There's so much potential and so many opportunities to make this the most unique yet familiar version of the game. Looking forward to it!

The Nintendo development is being handled by different teams to the other console versions. Our efforts there aren't holding up other updates - 505 remains committed to updating the existing versions and that work is ongoing. We'll have announcements there I'm sure soon, but I understand your frustration. Updating console is much Iess straightforward than PC, and I'm happy to share some specifics on that if you're unfamiliar as to why that is. Not sure what info you've been privy to in the past.

The 3DS version is being handled by CodeGlue. It's a different team from mobile, so again updates there won't be affected. They are doing a great job, and I can't wait for you to see it. It's obviously not going to be a port of the mobile version, because the second screen and physical controls need careful consideration. We're playing to the strengths of the console, don't worry.

Wii U is with Engine, and uses the second screen and touch controls to build on what was already a very solid base in the console versions.

Click to expand...

​

Question:
Will items such as the Plumber and Hero Outfits have their coloring returned to the original, in light of being on a Nintendo console?

Lot of people asking about plumber suit being the 'right' colour, and of course stuff like this was our first thought too.

We need Nintendo to approve anything that is overly 'theirs' appearing in these versions. Of course we've asked and we will continue to pursue it.

It might be that we need these versions to sell well enough to really capture their imagination. Our plan is to update the games post launch, so there's more than one opportunity to crack that nut.

I would also like to thank you for such an enthusiastic response to this announcement. We were expecting to grow the Terraria fanbase outside of hardcore players like yourselves and open it up to complete newbies. To have your support too is very humbling and testament to the great community around this classic game.

Click to expand...

​

Question:
Will this version get constant updates like the other versions?

No, just the GamePad, Wii U Pro Controller and Wii Remote and Nunchuk. The idea wasn't to try and support every controller that's ever existed, just to open up the split screen by supporting the controllers that people were most likely to own, ie. the Wii Remote. In the UK at least, Pro Controllers are thin on the ground and quite expensive.

Online multiplayer is not off the table forever, it just won't be a launch feature.

Nintendo is much stricter than Sony and Microsoft when it comes to the creation and transmission of user generated content, and the terraforming and sign edits etc fall under that. Local Play is seen as a safer environment for multiplayer on 3DS, because you are basically face to face with the other players.

Bear in mind that what might be ideal for the hardcore Terraria player might not be for a general 3DS player, and the latter group is where all the growth in the player base will come from. So while having a player set up a server on a PC might sound fine to you, how do we expect a younger player that's coming to this from a Mario game to do that?

As Nike Leon suggested, 3DS is a fixed world size and Wii U has the three size options from the console versions. That's part of the reason we can't support crossplay between the versions. Bear in mind the 3DS has a lot less RAM than a TV console, and the entirety of the world and all the content needs to be stored in RAM all the time.

The issue isn't space on the cart. You can get carts up into the gigabytes, and we can order as big a cart as we need. But the game needs to be loaded from the game cart into the system memory to run. So while, yes, we can have you stick the DL content on the SD card, it's all got to fit into memory when you run it.

Consider that Terraria isn't a game with levels that begin and end and can be loaded one after another. Terraria is open world, so you need all of it all of the time.

The single world size on 3ds can't be as big as the largest world on PC as a result.

I'm not sure the Tutorial immediately conveys the excitement and potential of the game in the way you'd want a demo to do. It leads you gently through the basic controls and principles well, but I think to repurpose it as a demo would be a mistake.

We've essentially got 1.2, minecarts, fishing, and a few other minor bits. We've already got more content in development and expect to add that in the Spring as a free update. As @Loki already pointed out, the technical ceiling is lower on 3DS than on any platform we've released Terraria on. If your bite point on the 3DS version is 'I want this to have all the same content as the PC version', then, apologies, this isn't going to be for you. On this generation of Nintendo handheld, that is an impossibility.

We've crammed as much in as we can to give the best experience possible on 3DS. I would advise the people of this forum to think of it as a companion to your 'main' Terraria. Newcomers to the series playing it first on 3DS are going to be blown away, of course.

The world size is the same size as on mobile. Towards the end of of production we had the possibility to make it slightly larger, but after consultation with Re-Logic we agreed that bringing back the biome backgrounds was more valuable. You can see the difference in the earliest videos that emerged and the current ones, and I'm happy we made the right call there.

I would also like to (briefly) address some of the technical issues that have been discussed in this thread: in order to create a 3D game on 3DS, you end up taking a huge performance hit as you have to render the world twice. Terraria is a 2D game. It might have looked nice for a while to have a bit of separation between the foreground tiles and the background layer, but can you imagine looking at that for hundreds of hours? What does it really add? We decided it wasn't worth compromising the game further to tick a box we didn't feel was important anyway. If you feel differently, again, stick with the version you already play.

Onto New 3DS: googling the specs of that machine and deciding that because it's got more RAM that the game would be twice as good on that platform is a gross oversimplification. I don't rule out the possibility of branching the New 3DS version at a later date if the demand is there, but the launch version must be as inclusive as possible.

I know some of you are disappointed at the lack of a demo, but I stand by the remarks I made earlier in the thread about why that was not a priority for us for launch. I saw one suggestion about creating a bespoke 300x300 world for you to have a play in, and it's a decent idea. But please understand that diverting the development resources to create a stand-alone version could not be priority for us pre-launch. The suggestion is well noted, though.

My feeling is in this age of the internet it's impossible to hide a bad game anymore. YouTube and social media see to that pretty quickly. We're confident that we've made an excellent game to ship, and we'll continue to work after launch. Once I get some download codes, I'll contact some of the people that have already posted in this thread and offer them the chance to play it. I realise the approval of your peers is far more convincing than anything I can tell you, so it's in my interest to help that along.

It was great to be able to show you new footage as part of Nintendo Direct. I may have cheekily hinted as much earlier in the thread, but I was deliberately subtle as Nintendo had us sworn to secrecy. The reception was overwhelmingly positive, and I can't wait to get the game out there. If only there was a way to make that happen sooner, hmm...

We've changed the targeting a little: the a target will appear on enemies in the direction you tilt the stick. To 'lock on' to a selected enemy, you then press X. The reticule stays locked to that character until you unlock it or kill it. That means you can choose the priority of enemies, rather than the game basically going for whatever is closest.

For ranged attacks, the projectile fires at the point the enemy was at when you hit 'fire'. So for quick moving enemies you might still want to use manual aim, or at least shoot when they are slowed to change direction. I had a quick go just now, and I was able to still hit Harpys pretty reliably with the lock on.

What you are seeing here is the new UI for 'Building Mode/Precision Mode' (name TBC). Now when you're in this mode, you get your 'best' of each of the five tool types autoselected in the left pane. The right pane shows all of your buildable/placeable items in a scrollable list. This means you've got immediate access to EVERYTHING on one screen, and there's no requirement to swap back to main inventory to select your next item.

The sixth and top slot on the LEFT is a weapon slot. This was added into the game after we produced the EGX demo build, and is the further UI evolution I mentioned before. That slot will be autopopulated with your currently selected weapon when you go into that mode, but tapping on that slot will cycle all your available weapons in that slot in inventory order.

The goal is to give you everything you need to make building as intuitive as possible, but also give you the possibility to switch to a weapon quickly if you need to quickly batter something.

I realise all this is new functionality, but it works really intuitively.

Oh, and the arrows as part of the pane hide and unhide the UI as you require it. These panes don't overlap the buildable area so you may never need that functionality, but some of the devs like it

I suppose I'll start with what's below the hotbar in the default touch screen interface. From what I can interpret, the icon on the right controls NPC housing, and on the left seems to be a "stack to chests" button of some sort. Looking at the middle button more, it seems like a "throw item" button, but it's difficult to tell. Mind clarifying on these three icons?

You're spot on, which I guess means we got the icons right! The middle button is 'drop into world' basically. You can drag hotbar items onto that area, at which point it becomes active. Reason for this is we want to let you drop stuff in multiplayer and the like, but it needs to be very deliberate. So not on a button you might accidentally hit to chuck away your primary weapon in combat.

Click to expand...

-----------------------------------------------------QUESTION:
Will 3DS have slots for dyeing equipment?

I would say they are unlikely to make it, but I'm loathe as ever to talk about content with that still in flux.

Click to expand...

​

To close out our announcement, let's give you what you are all wondering - an estimate on release timing! Of course, you will have all seen various published dates based upon the earlier rumors/leaks. For the most part, these are guesses or estimates. We are sharing here today that the expected launch for Terraria on Wii U and 3DS will take place in early 2016!

We have a few more surprises in store for this coming Holiday season, but we will save those for another time. Join us in celebrating this move that will finally bring Terraria to all of the major gaming platforms!

Well - I know this was leaked all over the place, and then there were rumors about a "cancellation" that people were spreading...it is great to see this once and for all confirmed and with an official release timing.

Well this is nice to see... I am one to prefer the nintendo portable over the others. Definitely interested in how those dual screen setup will work; and how it will play, as in control-wise. Be a different feel for sure, but looks promising.